Juvi Night Heron

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,

This is an image I question posting, but I'm curious to get feedback on. This is a juvenile night heron shot in Florida a bit ago. I wanted to see how the D500 could handle the really high ISOs (especially moving from a D3300), so I cranked the ISO here and overexposed this shot. In post then, I corrected exposure, did some tonal adjustments, and added some saturation and vibrance back in (more than I usually do but I felt the image looked washed out). From there I sharpened the bird, did some noise reduction on the bird, and then pretty heavy noise reduction on the background. I also cloned out a weird red blotch on the beak. This is full frame. Obviously many of you are much further along the Post Processing journey so I am curious to see if people think this is worth keeping or if it should be binned.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 360mm
Specs: 1/1000 ISO 14400 f/5.6

Thank you for looking,
Alex

[Isaac Grant]

Is that really ISO 14,400!!! Really? If so then ****, that looks great. Simple pose and nice surroundings. Bird looks a bit too over exposed to me but at that high an ISO i guess that is to be expected. I think a little more room on the right would be better.

[Alex Becker]

Yep! just checked again to be sure -- 14,400 ISO. Awesome to hear that it looks good! I'm pretty happy with the D500 so far. This is full frame but I'll pull the image into photoshop and try to add a bit more to the right hand side and then drop exposure a little as well. Thanks so much for the kind words!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yep, the IQ looks pretty good as posted for that high ISO. I like the vertical composition, although I do feel it is beginning to be tight comp-wise. You can reduce the exposure a tad more. I also feel the blown highlights along the top part of the frame is unfortunate - too bad it wasn't vegetation all the way up. I like the perch and neat view of the feet. Good profile pose too.